Third Degree
by mistspinner
Summary: Matt is dead, yet miraculously Mello is alive. Near pays Mello a visit in jail.


Hail Mary, full of grace/The lord is with thee/Blessed art thou amongwomen/And blessed is the fruit of thy womb/Jesus, Holy Mary, Mother of God/Pray for us sinners/Now and at the hour of our death. Amen

Mello, Near decides, didn't know how to die.

Not that he minds, not particularly, even if his rival's continued existence meant this, walking in a dark, fetid corridor with Gevanni and a silent guard to visit a boy who hated him. Well, had hated him. Near didn't know if Mello still did, if the fires and ashes had burned away his hate along with his skin. Perhaps.

Perhaps. It is an odd word, tastes strange, acrid on his tongue. But with Mello, it had always been all there was.

They turned a corridor. Gevanni kept his gun to the guard's head. It had, after all, only been two weeks since Near had announced Kira's death, and there had been more than a few incidents following it.

But. Those were nearly over, and now there was only this, one last thing to do before it was all over, before the world was complete once more. One last, elusive puzzle piece before picture perfection.

They stopped. The guard reached into his pocket, and Gevanni tensed at the motion. But he was only reaching for a flashlight, a small beam of light he tosses to Near. It falls on the cement floor, clatters, spins in the light of the single light bulb above.

Near picks it up, slowly shines it into the tiny cell.

"Here. You wanted him, kid? Here he is."

And there he was.

Mello glared at the guard's words, glared at the lights, glared at everything and Near. His eyes were still blue, blue and icy cold and unchanged.

The rest of him wasn't.

His face was bandaged. Old scars had opened in the fire, turned into new wounds in the two thousand degree heat. They had found him in the old church, flames licking around his limp body, eyes closed like a Buddhist monk, a smile on his face as he hung from the broken beams. They hadn't known, then, and so one of them - a deluded good Samaritan with a gun in his hip and Kira in his heart - had cut him down.

Later, he had been furious, called them obscenities Near had smiled to hear Halle report. Mello had, she said, told them he had wanted to die (_you goddamn fucking bastards_).

And when they realized who he was, Takada's guards had decided, then, not to kill him. To keep him alive, mutilated and burnt and horribly alive. It would, they reasoned, be more painful than mere death. Besides, a heart attack would have been too merciful; something more fitting, more painful would be more fitting. Like being drawn and quartered, or being burnt alive.

His hair had been burning, and so they had cut it off, let it burn corn silk gold in the blue flames.

Slowly, Gevanni maneuvers the guard away, leaving Mello and Near alone. In the light of a single light bulb and a single flashlight, they stare at each other.

Mello speaks first.

"What do you want?" he growls through fire-burnt lips. His voice is gravelly: fire-scored, fire-burnt. Fire-shaped, fire-defiant.

Near does not answer.

Mello growls, a deep, animalistic sound that echoes off the filthy walls and musty air. "If you've come here to gloat, get it over with, you little bastard."

"No," Near says softly, the accusation bouncing softly off his grey eyes, "I've come to set you free."

A silence.

"Kira is dead, Mello. He was shot shortly after his confession." And because of you. "You're free."

Near reaches in his baggy pajama pocket, takes out a thin ring of keys. He unlocks the door.

Mello doesn't move, only stares, his eyes and mouth the only things visible from his mummy-bandaged face.

"He's dead," he says slowly.

"Yes," Near answers, opening the prison door. "Kira's dead."

"Matt's dead."

And Near cannot deny that, much as he hears the desolation Mello's voice.

"Yes," Near says, taking a pocket knife out his pocket. Mello's eyes do not widen at it, only seem to grow brighter, and his face seems to relax under the bandages, to lighten. To gladden.

Near takes the knife, and cuts the bonds that hold Mello's hands together behind his back. Takes another key, unlocks the chains bounding Mello's feet. Stands up, slowly appraises his former rival.

Mello does not move. There is disappointment in his blue eyes.

"Kira is dead," Near repeats, slowly. "We've finished, we've won. Justice has won. L has won."

Near turns, and exits the prison. He does not look back to see if Mello follows.

Slowly, though, Mello does, limps on burnt feet through the darkness and the cold in silence. And at the hospital, awaiting skin fusions and IV solutions, Mello finally speaks.

"Matt's dead," he says, and - lying on the stark white cot - the fire dies in his eyes.


End file.
